


if i'm just a body

by thalassashells



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Gen, Implied/Referenced Past Sexual Abuse, Nonbinary Character, pre-relationship? wayy pre-relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 16:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20010988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thalassashells/pseuds/thalassashells
Summary: At sixteen summers, Fray Myste does not want to be wanted.





	if i'm just a body

He's been watching them.

It started a couple days ago. Fray's shirt had been torn in some bar fight they were both roundly scolded for. Sidurgu had looked haplessly at the bared flesh, made unconscious note of the hollow of their thin throat leading to their chest. They wondered what he saw there. Was it skin? Was it the rabbit-quick pulse beneath? Was it the line of a scar that crossed their collarbone?

Fray had glared at him and he jerked his gaze away, fixing his eyes awkwardly on some fleck on the wall or a mote of dust he'd follow through the room. He knew better than to challenge their denials, silent or otherwise. Good for him.

He'd asked them if they were okay. They told him to piss off. He ran his fingers through his matted, long hair and shrugged.

Now, he watched them eat. A hard hunk of bread and soup. The same thing he had. Those green eyes spent so much time unfocused – lost in his thoughts, lost in a daydream – that when they narrowed in on the movement of Fray's hand to their lips it felt like fire on iron. They take their bowl into their lap and turn to face the frosty window. Sidurgu gazes a minute longer, and Fray tucks their head low.

Then he watches them get into bed, and Fray's hackles are as high as they can rise. They do not undress (they never do) but he makes them feel naked all the same. He's lying in the bunk across from them, limbal rings glowing in the inky night. Bright and warning, like the stripes on a poison frog.

"What do you want?" They finally ask, staring directly back into him.

He panics. He pulls the blankets up closer around his face, tries to make it look as though he'd never seen them at all. His face becomes an empty shadow without his eyes to light the way, a swirling space Fray's mind tried to fill with all sorts of evil things, old faces.

"Answer me." They hiss. Their heart pounds in their chest, malms from their mind.

"Nothing. I don't know." Sidurgu whimpers. Oh, Halone, he whimpers. Like a kicked pup. Like he doesn't know what he's doing.

Any boy knows what he's doing. If Fray has learned one thing from their wretched home, it is that boys with wandering eyes have no alibi. And yet, Sidurgu does not move. He does not reach out. He does not laugh.

"You want me, don't you?" Fray spits across the silence, rage bubbling in their throat. It is such a soft word, want. Want is a violent thing. People take when they want. They start listing places to go in their mind: old and empty houses, shops with rat-ridden attics, hovels and torn stone. The many places a hyur bastard of sixteen summers could hide away, alone and untouchable.

Sidurgu says no.

Fray's ears burn with shame.

"Good." They say and roll over. Why was this bed so hard tonight?

"I was checking on you." Sidurgu says weakly. Fray fists their hand into their blanket.

"Why?"

"You were quiet. After the fight." He sounds muffled. Fray wonders if he's speaking through his pillow. It wouldn't be the first time. That sweet voice of his – that shy, stilted admission – it sickened them to no end.

"Well," Fray rolls back onto their other side, no comfort to be found in the air they've stoked, no refuge from their wild accusations,"I'm fine. So quit looking."

Sidurgu does not respond. At some point, sleep takes him. Fray watches until the rise and fall of his breaths are even, just to be sure they had nothing to fear.

Just to be sure. No reason more, no reason less.

**Author's Note:**

> i might make this into a pile for all of my drk drabbles bc god knows i have a lot sitting around. we'll see. we shall see


End file.
